Women?s health in mid-life: life course social roles and agencyas quality

Data from a prospective British birth cohort study showed that women who were childless, lone mothers or full-timehomemakers between the ages of 26 and 54 were more likely to report poor health at age 54 than women who occupiedmultiple roles between these ages. To explain this finding we developed and tested a theory of role quality based on theconcept of agency by drawing on Giddens? theory of structuration and Doyal and Gough?s theory of human needs.According to our theory, the patriarchal structuration (drawing on Giddens? term) of work and family roles provides bothlimitation and opportunity for the expression of agency. Doyal and Gough?s theory of human needs was then used toidentify the restriction of agency as a possible influence on health. This theory of role quality was operationalised using ameasure of work (paid and unpaid) quality at age 36 and a measure of work and family stress between ages 48 and 54. Therelatively poor subjective health in mid-life of lone mothers was explained by work and family stress and adult social class.In contrast, the poor health in mid-life of long-term homemakers and childless women was less easily explained.Homemaker?s excess risk of reporting poor health at age 54 remained strong and significant even after adjusting for rolequality and socioeconomic indicators, and childless women were at an increased risk of reporting poor health despite thesocial advantage inherent in attaining educational qualifications and occupying professional or managerial occupations.This study highlights the need to develop measures of role quality specifically designed to capture agency aspects of socialroles

Development of Composite Materials with Embedded Structural Health Monitoring Systems

Undergraduate Basi

Nonstandard work schedules in the UK: What are the implications for parental mental health and relationship happiness?

This article investigates the associations between nonstandard work schedules, parents’ mental health, and couple relationship happiness across childhood using the Millennium Cohort Study, a longitudinal, population-based data set of births in the UK. Using individual fixed effects models, we investigated the relationship between maternal and paternal nonstandard work schedules, examining both separate and joint work schedules and mental health and relationship happiness. Although we did not observe any associations between mothers’ nonstandard work schedules and their mental health, we did find regularly working night schedules were associated with lower relationship happiness, and particularly so during the school-age period. Fathers’ evening and weekend work schedules were associated with worse mental health. The joint work schedule in which mothers worked a standard schedule and fathers worked nonstandard schedules was associated with lower relationship happiness for mothers and worse mental health for fathers. These results demonstrate the salience of incorporating fathers’ work schedules to understand the challenges and benefits to families of nonstandard work schedules. Our study also emphasizes the significance of investigating the family consequences of nonstandard work schedules in different country contexts